It had been a long 12 months. An entire year of work. But they had accomplished a lot of great things. There had been set backs but there had also been rewards. One of the best decisions of his life had been deciding to join Doctors without Borders. Gregory Randolph was not the best doctor in the world, it wasn’t his specialty. He was more of a geneticist and a student of biology. His work had been more research based. But he did have his medical degree, and putting it to work with those who needed it the most had seemed like a good decision. But the grind of seeing patient after patient in this war torn country had taken its toll on him.

Randolph was sitting in front of his computer, staring at the options on the screen. The screen was telling him that since his contract with Doctors without Borders was up, he needed to decide what to do. He could reup for another twelve months, or he could take a few months off. He wanted to help people, he did. At the same time, he needed to do something else with his life. Maybe he only needed a break. A break would be good. He could rest and recharge his mental batteries and come back to this job refreshed and ready for more.

They were part of a mission to help treat victims of genocide and government oppression. There were a number of people who needed help here. The government had seen a lot of political upheaval over the years, and the Americans had come in to lend assistance. With them, Doctors without Borders and the United Nations had sent in humanitarian teams to try to make sense of everything. There were some people who were languishing in political prison and had been for years.

He looked up as one of his aides came into the tent.

“What is it?” He asked, in French.

“They’ve uncovered a new prison. Buried in the ground. They need your assistance.” The aide said.

He slowly rose from his desk.

His work never seemed to end. His eyes glanced back down at the screen. There were still a few more days to decide what he wanted to do. The decision could wait for now.

You know it's a bad day when you jump out of bed and miss the floor.
"I declare War!!"~Peay

Josephine Cassell opened the door to the jeep and stepped outside, her boots digging into the sand. She was still trying to figure out what she was doing in a place like this. Trying to make a difference, if she had to guess. She was a high schooler who had decided to volunteer over the summer and she’d gone overseas with a group of high schoolers to help with Doctors without Borders. The work had been rewarding, but she felt as though there was more she could be doing or should be doing back home in the United States. There was a lot that needed to be done and maybe it was one of those things where helping the poorest of the poor was the best thing to do.

She had been with Dr. Randolph for some time now, helping him and assisting him. It had opened her eyes to the medical needs of people and had helped form her thoughts towards what she wanted to do in college. While Josephine wasn’t a hundred percent sure, she knew she wanted to do something in medicine. For sure, she could say that Dr. Randolph had pointed her in that direction.

She watched as he stepped out of his tent and looked around, until he saw her. He waved and started walking over.

“Pierre was saying something about a new prison being found?” He asked.

“Yeah, it’s a big one. I don’t know how they didn't find it before, but you know how shitty the records are being kept here.”

“Try ‘shoddily’, instead. I don’t know if your mother would appreciate that language.”

She laughed. “Sure, shoddily.” Josephine replied. “We’ll go with it.” She pointed to the jeep where their driver was waiting, patiently. “Shall we?”

My family puts the FUN in Dysfunctional!
"You declare War?! I Accept!"~ Crow

Gregory opened his eyes wide, trying to give his eyes the best chance they had to adjust to the lack of sunlight. It was dusty and it was dark. The air smelled stale, but it was cool. There was a commotion ahead of Gregory as different members of the humanitarian team moved equipment and portable lights. They were in a deep cave, and well under the ground. But the team had found a door of sorts, and had unlocked it to find an underground web of a prison system. It wasn’t surprising. This country had seen a lot of upheaval and issues and due to that political prisoners had been everywhere. To Jospehine’s earlier point, the records had been kept rather poorly.

He wasn’t sure how long these people had been kept underground and kept away from their freedom. He wasn’t sure either whether any of them deserved to be in prison. For one thing, it forced the doctors to be on their toes when it came to treatment. While everyone was treated the same, regardless of crime, personal safety was always an issue.

But Gregory didn’t have those concerns. Because Gregory had a secret, one that he had rarely told anyone. Josephine was one of those few people.

Gregory Randolph was a high level telepath.

When he pushed those senses outwards, he knew there were people beyond the door. He could sense their presence and feel the different emotions running through their minds.

He had to help them.

You know it's a bad day when you jump out of bed and miss the floor.
"I declare War!!"~Peay

Josephine was one of the first through the door, and she looked around what appeared to be a large foyer. The equipment in the facility was very dated, and the computers looked incredibly old. Walking up to one of them, she was unsurprised when it did not turn on. They were still in the process of running power back into the prison, and many of the systems were down. If there were still people down here, they were being imprisoned through old fashioned means, that was for sure.

She looked over at Randolph. “Doc, are there even people down here?” She asked.

“Definitely.” He said and gave her a look. “I can tell.”

Josephine knew what he was referring to. “That’s good enough for me.”

It was good enough for the rest of the group, as they had learned, over time, to trust the doctor.

If he said there were survivors here, then there were survivors here. It was just a matter of finding them and getting to them.

My family puts the FUN in Dysfunctional!
"You declare War?! I Accept!"~ Crow

Gregory and his team had found a power source that they could bring down into the area that would work with the computers. They had read through a list of rosters. The rosters were a list of people who had been kept here. This was a prison after all. Some of the data was out of date, most of it really. The information that was here, it was all over the place. The records stopped going back a few years back. The place had long been abandoned. It meant that no one had been taking care of them for years. But the doctors and their helpers had been through the prison’s different rooms. There were nothing but bodies.

So then what was Gregory sensing? It was something, or better put, someone, deep within this prison.

He had his powers telling him that someone was here. But who? And where? How had someone been able to survive here for years after the prison had been abandoned?

He looked over at Jospehine, but she shook her head. They had nothing.

One of the computers beeped and she walked over to it. Looking at the screen, her eyes grew large.

“There’s another listing. People being held in another part of the prison.” She said and looked over at him. “This could be it.”

Josephine and Gregory stood in a long corridor. This part of the prison was deeper than the others, and the design was interesting. As they’d progressed further and further, the building materials had slowly shifted. There was far more wood and hardened dirt than anything else. Really that’s all it was. To Josephine, this made sense, as construction costs probably necessitated using whatever was available. At the end of the corridor was a heavy looking wooden door and a chair next to it. The door had a slat on it that could be opened so one could see inside of the next room.

They had a few of their United Nations peacekeepers with them. The group advanced, flashlights raised. There was no power down here and it wouldn’t have made a difference. There didn’t appear to be anything electrical. It was almost as if they had completely shifted to the dark ages or medieval times with technology.

It harkened back to an older time, a time of fire being the light man used to forge his way through the world. Reaching the door, Josephine looked over at Gregory. “Anything?” She asked.

He nodded, looking over his shoulder at the UN peacekeepers for a moment. “Yes.” He replied. “I can feel it.”

She pulled the slat away, loosening up dust and debris that had been caught in the tracks for some years. Waving her hand, she cleared the air before crouching down to look through the small viewing port. Her eyes widened and she gestured for Gregory to crouch down as well.

He did as she beckoned and he looked through.

My family puts the FUN in Dysfunctional!
"You declare War?! I Accept!"~ Crow

He was not aware of what was going on around him. It was a seamless sleep, a content calm that surrounded him. But the manner in which he left that was violent, it was visceral, it was vicious. He came too, sputtering through the tube that was down his throat. He choked, repeatedly, until a hand reached out and pulled the tube out. Coughing, he vomited. His eyes tried to adjust, but there was little light to use. He realized that he was hanging in the air, suspended and being held there.

“Do you know who you are?” A voice asked him.

He recognized the language being spoken. It was English. But everything was slurred to his hearing. He tried to follow the sound and saw a man in front of him.

“Do you know who you are?” The man asked him again.

“Isa.” He mumbled.

The man turned to someone else. “Check his vitals. We need to get him out of here.”